History Main / ShakespeareInFiction

* Shakespeare walks in and out of the Flying Karamazov Brother's '80s production of ''Theatre/ComedyOfErrors''. In one scene, while Antipholus of Ephesus discusses his plans to visit a courtesan he knows, Shakespeare walks on stage holding a cardboard sign bearing the word "PLOT". In the final act, in response to the line "Behold, a man much wronged!" [[SelfDeprecation Shakespeare walks onstage and bows.]]

* Though Shakespeare has been dead for years by the time of ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'', Doctor Abrabanel mentions that the Earl of Oxford was the real playwright, though William Shakespeare certainly existed and may have had a hand in some of the lesser plays.

* Shakespeare appears in one version of "Series/WhereInTimeisCarmenSandiego", when one of VILE agents steals his original scripts. Renee Santz and you help one of his actors fix the Globe's wall.

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': He appears in ''Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld II: The Globe'': a timeline lacking him retards human progress as they fall victim to TheFairFolk, so the wizards have to ensure his birth - ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' makes the elves figures of fun in the human imagination and they fade from a position of influence.

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* ''Anime/RomeoXJuliet'' has William de Farnese alias Willy, a playwright who lets the Capulets take shelter in his theater. He's a BunnyEarsLawyer who is always late for work and seems not to take things seriously, but turns out to be SmarterThanYouLook (i.e., he is perfectly aware of Juliet's secret even from the start.)
[[/folder]]

* ''Literature/ArciaChronicles'' feature an {{Expy}} of Shakespeare, though it's not a very favorable portrayal: more like a TakeThat for his work on ''Theatre/RichardIII'', since Richard III's expy is one of the good guys in the story.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
** He appears in ''Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld II: The Globe'': a timeline lacking him retards human progress as they fall victim to TheFairFolk, so the wizards have to ensure his birth - ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' makes the elves figures of fun in the human imagination and they fade from a position of influence.
** His {{Expy}} on the Disc is a dwarf playwright named Hwel, who suffers from being a kind of lightningrod for bolts of inspiration across the multiverse (which is why his drafts contain not only parodies of Shakesperean plays but movies as well). [[Discworld/WyrdSisters He's hired to write a revisionist version of King Verence of Lancre's murder by Duke Felmet]], much as ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'' featured an ancestor of the current king of England in a better light.

* In ''[[ComicBook/BlakeAndMortimer The Testament of William S.]]'', Shakespeare is a posthumous character. The story is set in 1958 and is an investigation about the mystery surrounding Shakespeare's real authorship of his works. [[spoiler: It turns out that William Shakespeare is actually the collective pen-name of two friends, an English peasant named William Shake (who became the official face of their duo) and an Italian aristocrat named Guillermo Da Spiri. Since his family forbade him to befriend this kind of commoners, Da Spiri couldn't use his real name to sign their plays, thus the pen-name "William Shake-Speare" ("Guillermo" being the Italian equivalent of "William"). Ir's also revealed that "Shakespeare" simulated his death in 1616 and fled England with his friend Da Spiri, living in Italy under a fake identity for a couple of decades..]]

** He appears in one of the ''Science of Discworld'' books: a timeline lacking him retards human progress as they fall victim to TheFairFolk, so the wizards have to ensure his birth - ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' makes the elves figures of fun in the human imagination and they fade from a position of influence.

** The ''Short Trips'' short story "Apocrypha Bipedium" set shortly after the audio ''Time of the Daleks'' [[spoiler:has the young Shakespeare read ''The Complete Works of Shakespeare''.]]
** The book ''Short Trips: Past Tense'' contains a story where the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane end up helping Christopher Marlowe fake his own death and become William Shakespeare. The Doctor gives him a copy of ''The Complete Works of Shakespeare'' (which he'd used as a PocketProtector) and [[StableTimeLoop tells him only to read it 'when he gets stuck']].

* A ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' comic strip, "A Groatsworth of Wit" (by Gareth Roberts, who also wrote "The Shakespeare Code") has the Elizabethan playwright Robert Greene (a colleague of Shakespeare, who wrote a pamphlet attacking his plays) travel to the 21st century, where he's horrified to learn that the upstart actor he was so disparaging of is thought of as the greatest playwright of the age, whereas he's just barely remembered as the guy who said ItWillNeverCatchOn.

[[folder:Film]]
* The Creator/RolandEmmerich film ''Film/{{Anonymous}}'' ([[Website/FourChan no relation]]) involves the theory that the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays. William Shakespeare shows up as a {{JerkAss}} [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade hack actor who steals credit for Oxford's work and killed Marlowe]]. The film was trashed critically upon release.

* ''Film/{{Bill}}'', a comedy version of how Shakespeare found success, including the idea that he thwarted a Spanish plot to blow up Elizabeth I.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E2TheShakespeareCode "The Shakespeare Code"]] is centered around the first (and only) performance of ''Love's Labours Won'' (which turns out to have been destroyed because Shakespeare was manipulated into writing it as a summoning ritual for a group of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s). Among other references, it has a pub named the Elephant that Shakespeare frequents (''Theatre/TwelfthNight'' has an inn of the same name). It plays Shakespeare as akin to a rock star of the Middle Ages with a genius-level intellect. Martha Jones turns out to be the Dark Lady of the sonnets. They also play with Shakespeare's suspected bisexuality (i.e, he hits on both Martha and the Doctor).
** In the Fourth Doctor story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E2CityOfDeath "City of Death"]], the Doctor is shown reading a manuscript of ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' (which he hand-wrote for Will, who had sprained his wrist writing sonnets) and claiming that he helped compose the famous "To be or not to be" speech.
** Shakespeare is seen briefly through a {{Chronoscope}} in the First Doctor story [[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E8TheChase "The Chase"]].

-->'''Shakespeare:''' Who's Ken Branagh?\\

* In the ''Series/FantasyIsland'' segment "Room and Bard", an aspiring actress wants to give a performance "worthy of Shakespeare himself." She travels back to Elizabethan England and helps Shakespeare out of a jam with her acting ability.
* ''Series/RedDwarf'':
** Will Shakespeare is the greatest playwright in the parallel universe as well, though he is not a he: Her full name was Wilma Shakespeare.
** Rimmer has a collection of books he treasures, and among them ''The Complete Works'' of the bard. Unfortunately, he hasn't read any of them. When asked to quote something, he cites the great monologue that starts with "NOW" something-something-something... (Rimmer also thought his first name was Wilfred. Then again, Lister hadn't even heard of him).
* ''Series/UpstartCrow'', a comedy series written by Creator/BenElton and starring Creator/{{David Mitchell|Actor}} as Shakespeare, revolves around his early career before he really hits it off. Complete with numerous ItWillNeverCatchOn moments, adventures curiously similar to his later works which end up inspiring him in a completely different direction, and an inversion of the UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory that someone else wrote Shakespeare's plays.
* Shakespeare appears in multiple episodes of ''Series/HorribleHistories''. Highlights include him fighting an insult duel where he knocks his opponent out with [[BrownNote the quality of his insults]] (before being knocked out by the man's wife), and singing a song where he shows off many of the words and phrases he introduced to the language.

[[folder:Theater]]

* ''A Cry of Players'' by William Gibson[[note]](no, [[NamesTheSame not]] [[Literature/{{Neuromancer}} that one]])[[/note]] is about Shakespeare leaving Stratford to become an actor.

* In the ''Franchise/DSeathNote'' CrackFic ''Fanfic/LightAndDarkTheAdventuresOfDarkYagami'', his name is spelled "[[RougeAnglesOfSatin Shakespeer]]", he speaks in YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe, and he was [[ArtisticLicenseHistory The King of England]]. When threatened, he talks in "Pomes". They are painful.

* In Fanfic/LightAndDarkTheAdventuresOfDarkYagami, his name is spelled "[[RougeAnglesOfSatin Shakespeer]]", he speaks in YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe, and he was [[ArtisticLicenseHistory The King of England]]. When threatened, he talks in "Pomes". They are painful.

** ''The Kingmaker'' (in which [[spoiler:Shakespeare travels back to the time of Richard III and dies at Bosworth Field, so Richard takes his place and writes the plays]]).
** ''Time of the Daleks'' features a woman who invents a time machine in order to go back and see Shakespeare's plays when they were first performed. She manages to screw up the timeline so that the plays were never written. [[spoiler:The character credited as "Kitchen Boy" is actually a very young William Shakespeare.]]

* Creator/IsaacAsimov wrote a very short story called "The Immortal Bard" about a physics professor at a faculty mixer bragging to an English professor that he invented a time machine that can bring famous historical figures into the present. Out of all the ones he tried, Shakespeare was the only one who could handle [[FishOutOfTemporalWater being out of temporal water]] and didn't ask to be sent back right away. However, one day the professor was approached by a ''very'' pissed-off Shakespeare who ''demanded'' to be sent back to his own time, having never felt so insulted in his life. The English professor, who clearly doesn't believe a word of this story, asks what could ''possibly'' make Shakespeare so angry. [[spoiler:He took the English professor's class on Shakespeare... [[DeathOfTheAuthor and flunked]]]].

* In Fanfic/LightAndDarkTheAdventuresOfDarkYagami, his name is spelled "[[RougeAnglesOfSatin Shakespeer]]", he speaks in YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe, and he was [[YouFailHistoryForever The King of England]]. When threatened, he talks in "Pomes". They are painful.

--> '''Shakespeare''': "Come bite my thumb, I hope you know the stakes! I'll put a [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter slug]] between your shoulder blades, then ask "through what light yonder poser breaks?" I hath been iambic on that ass, ye bastard! My rhymes are classic. ''Your'' crap is drafted by a kindergartner [[ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs high on acid]]! Ye hoebag, you're an old white Music/SouljaBoy with no swag, and no gonads: egads, it's so sad! And to top it off, you're not a doctor! I've never seen a softer author. You crook, you, [[CrowningMomentOfFunny I bet you wrote the]] {{Literature/Twilight}} [[TakeThat books too]]!"

* Shakespeare walks in and out of the Flying Karamazov Brother's '80s production of ''Theatre/ComedyOfErrors''. In one scene, while Antipholus of Ephesus discusses his plans to visit a courtesan he knows, Shakespeare walks on stage holding a cardboard sign bearing the word "PLOT". In the final act, in response to the line "Behold, a man much wronged!" [[SelfDepreciation Shakespeare walks onstage and bows.]]

* Shakespeare walks in and out of the Flying Karamazov Brother's '80s production of ''Theatre/AComedyOfErrors''. In one scene, while Antipholus of Ephesus discusses his plans to visit a courtesan he knows, Shakespeare walks on stage holding a cardboard sign bearing the word "PLOT". In the final act, in response to the line "Behold, a man much wronged!" [[SelfDepreciatingHumor Shakespeare walks onstage and bows.]]

* ''Series/UpstartCrow'' is a BritCom written by Creator/BenElton, and incorporating his typical snark at the British Establishment, and starring Creator/DavidMitchell as William Shakespeare, trying to make his name as a playwright in Elizabethan England. Contains a lot of historical in-jokes for Shakespeare buffs.

* Shakespeare appears in multiple episodes of ''Series/HorribleHistories'. Highlights include him fighting an insult duel where he knocks his opponent out with [[BrownNote the quality of his insults]] (before being knocked out by the man's wife), and singing a song where he shows off many of the words and phrases he introduced to the language.

[[caption-width-right:282:"To build, or not to build? That is the question."]]

[[quoteright:206:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/BILLS.gif]]

-->'''Witch:''' Banquo's sons will be kings, yes
-->Each one will get handsomer and handsomer until King James I
-->'''King James:''' ''(starry-eyed)'' Did that really happen
-->'''Shakespeare:''' Yes

* In ''TheSimpsonsGame'', Shakespeare appears [[spoiler:as an angel guarding the gates to FluffyCloudHeaven. [[ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption You have to beat him up to enter]].]]